Congruency Inc., a leading provider of award-winning and carrier class VoIP telecommunications infrastructure software and products, today announced the receipt of $10.25 million of new financing. To date, congruency has raised over $24 million.
New investors in this financing include London-based Elwin Capital Partners and The Challenge Fund. This newly formed relationship with Elwin also will accelerate the company’s sales, marketing and distribution initiatives to European PTTs and other global communication providers.
In addition, existing investors Vertex Israel Fund, Giza Venture Capital and private individuals also participated in the financing. Joining Dr. Gideon Shichman on congruency’s Board of Directors are Eli Muraidekh of Elwin Capital and Zvi Shechter of Giza Venture Capital.
“We welcome Elwin Capital Partners and the Challenge Fund as new shareholders, in addition to the continued investment and support from Vertex Management Israel, the Giza Fund and other private individuals with this latest round of financing,” said Ralph Hayon, congruency’s CEO and President. “congruency’s CNS 3200 Enhanced Hosted Communications Platform and i.Picasso 6000 IP phone have received multiple awards, and importantly, are attracting significant demand from communication carriers around the globe that are now realizing the benefits of telecommunications over broadband IP networks. Congruency is committed to delivering outstanding value to customers and shareholders, and is extremely pleased to have realized this most recent investment in the company.”
Dr. Gideon Shichman, Vice President of Vertex Management Israel said, “Despite the concerns voiced by the major carriers in the past over commercial VoIP deployment, recent implementations by the big carriers is helping to give VoIP a second wind. The market is expected to account for about 75% of the world's voice services by 2007. In 2000, the time spent using VoIP showed momentum in the industry with wholesale VoIP traffic volume exceeding 6 billion minutes and retail traffic measuring 15 billion minutes. This encouraging statistics motivated Vertex and all other existing investors to significantly increase its stake in the company and to support it in attracting new strategic investors that will support it in its penetration to the lucrative European market”.
Vertex Management Israel manages $250 million in venture capital and is part of the International Vertex Group. The Group manages $1 billion in venture capital and has offices in the USA, the UK, Israel, Denmark, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and China. Vertex Management Israel invests in seed and early stage companies and focuses its investments primarily on Telecommunications, Information Networking and Internet Enabling Technologies. Vertex Management Israel’s strategic investors include Singapore Technologies, Discount Capital Markets and Investments, Creative Technology, Nomura International, JAFCO, NTT, Hitachi, Safeguard Scientific, and Mellon Ventures.
Congruency provides hosted VoIP telecommunications software and products that enable the creation and delivery of enhanced services and end-to-end telecommunications over next generation broadband networks. The company's award-winning software solution, the CNS 3200 Enhanced Hosted Communications Platform, enables carriers and enterprises to deploy hosted telecommunications services, including Managed and VPN Telephony. Advanced services include IP voice mail with unified messaging, automated attendant and conference call management. The CNS 3200 also enables innovative and enhanced capabilities, such as the simple personalization of IP telephones and the delivery of directed visual content and HTML applications to screen-enabled IP telephones like the company's touch-screen i.Picasso 6000 IP phone, with the quality and reliability expected by business enterprises. Based in Rochelle Park, N.J., congruency has a development office in Petah-Tikva, Israel.
Published by Israel's Business Arena on June 26, 2001.